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Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane
By Jeff Tamarkin. 2003
The most successful and influential rock band to emerge from San Francisco during the 1960s, Jefferson Airplane created the sound…
of a generation. Their smash hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" virtually invented the era's signature pulsating psychedelic music and, during one of the most tumultuous times in American history, came to personify the decade's radical counterculture. In this groundbreaking biography of the band, veteran music writer and historian Jeff Tamarkin produces a portrait of the band like none that has come before it. Having worked closely with Jefferson Airplane for more than a decade, Tamarkin had unprecedented access to the band members, their families, friends, lovers, crew members, fellow musicians, cultural luminaries, even the highest-ranking politicians of the time. More than just a definitive history, Got a Revolution! is a rock legend unto itself. Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief and publisher of Rolling Stone, wrote, "The classic [Jefferson] Airplane lineup were both architects and messengers of a psychedelic age, a liberation of mind and body that profoundly changed American art, politics, and spirituality. It was a renaissance that could only have been born in San Francisco, and the Airplane, more than any other band in town, spread the good news nationwide."Forbidden Cocktails: Libations Inspired by the World of Pre-Code Hollywood
By André Darlington. 2024
A stunning package for classic film buffs and drinks enthusiasts alike, all the &“forbidden&” fun of Pre-Code Hollywood and the…
Prohibition and speakeasy era meet in this stylish cocktail book. What might Jean Harlow have sipped for Dinner at Eight? What did Barbara Stanwyck take to steel herself in Baby Face? If you&’re a classic film fan who&’s ever pondered these questions, or are a bartender or at-home entertainer who adores Prohibition-era cocktails, this guide to mixed drinks inspired by Pre-Code Hollywood is essential reading. The stars and stories of the &“forbidden&” time in moviemaking before strict censorship was enforced and the movies reflected a raucous freedom that would be unseen again for decades take the spotlight in Forbidden Cocktails. With 50 film-and-drink pairings and packaged handsomely with more than 100 full-color and black-and-white photos throughout, this is a practical and stunning homage to a singularly exuberant and evocative era. Movie-and-cocktail pairings include: The Divorcee / Balanced Account; Hell&’s Angels / Platinum Blonde; Dracula / Count Draiquiri; Strangers May Kiss / Stranger&’s Kiss; The Public Enemy / Tom Powers; Night Nurse / My Pal Rye; Shanghai Express / Shanghai Lily; Scarface / First Ward; One Way Passage / Passage to Paradise; Trouble in Paradise / Lubitsch Touch; Call Her Savage / Greenwich Village; Sign of the Cross / Naked Moon; Gold Diggers of 1933 / Pettin&’ in the Park; Flying Down to Rio / Hotel Hibiscus; It Happened One Night / It Happened One Morning; The Thin Man / AstaA Look at My Life
By Eileen Agar. 2024
A beautiful new edition of the long out-of-print autobiography of the pioneering Surrealist artist Eileen Agar. Whether dancing on the…
rooftops in Paris, sharing ideas with Pablo Picasso, or gathering starfish on the beaches of Cornwall, Eileen Agar transformed the everyday into the extraordinary. Her legacy as a pioneering figure in the surrealist movement is firmly established, and her work continues to captivate audiences with its otherworldly beauty and imaginative power. Agar’s life was no less extraordinary than her art. In A Look at My Life, she traces her life from her birth in Argentina to the late 1980s. She gives an intimate account of very different worlds: grand house parties in Buenos Aires and Belgravia as a young girl give way to la vie bohème in London and Paris and a peripatetic existence with her lifelong partner, Hungarian writer Joseph Bard. She enjoyed enriching friendships with contemporaries Paul Nash, Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Gertrude Hermes, and Henry Moore, while a summer spent in the South of France with Picasso, Lee Miller, and Man Ray had a lasting impact. Agar introduces them and many others into the narrative of her artistic development; above all, it is Agar’s own unwavering resilience, infectious energy, and drive that permeates this compelling memoir. Bringing her work to life in all its vibrancy and variety, this updated autobiography is populated with Agar’s personal selection of photographs of family, friends, and lovers alongside over fifty color illustrations of collages, paintings, and assemblages spanning her life’s work.The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface
By Glenn Kenny. 2024
The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic film Scarface, featuring new interviews with the cast and crew. An unflinching confrontation of humanity&’s…
dark side, Brian De Palma&’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino&’s masterful characterization of Tony Montana to the iconic &“Say hello to my little friend,&” Scarface maintains its reputation as an unwavering game changer in cult classic cinema. With brand-new interviews and untold stories of the film&’s production, longtime film critic Glenn Kenny takes us on an unparalleled journey through the making of American depictions of crime. The World Is Yours highlights the influential characters and themes within Scarface, reflecting on how its storied legacy played such a major role in American culture.A Black Girl in the Middle: Essays on (Allegedly) Figuring It All Out
By Shenequa Golding. 2024
'Growing up in Queens, I didn't know being named Shenequa was considered "ghetto" or uncouth. It was only later in…
life that I realized I was being judged by a decision I had no control over... I will examine the double-standard Black girls with big names like Shenequa face, and the quick math we have to calculate when trying to de-escalate drama.'In A BLACK GIRL IN THE MIDDLE, a timely, compelling, and blazingly honest essay collection, Shenequa Golding holds up her magnifying glass to both her own experiences and those of young Black women everywhere. With her trademark wit and originality, Shenequa covers identity-searching themes of white supremacy, feminism, misogyny, love, sex and heartbreak. But this isn't just a book about Black women's trauma, it is also a book that embraces and celebrates the things that make Black women different. For readers of SLAY IN YOUR LANE, Candice Brathwaite and Issa Rae.A Black Girl in the Middle: Essays on (Allegedly) Figuring It All Out
By Shenequa Golding. 2024
'Growing up in Queens, I didn't know being named Shenequa was considered "ghetto" or uncouth. It was only later in…
life that I realized I was being judged by a decision I had no control over... I will examine the double-standard Black girls with big names like Shenequa face, and the quick math we have to calculate when trying to de-escalate drama.'In A BLACK GIRL IN THE MIDDLE, a timely, compelling, and blazingly honest essay collection, Shenequa Golding holds up her magnifying glass to both her own experiences and those of young Black women everywhere. With her trademark wit and originality, Shenequa covers identity-searching themes of white supremacy, feminism, misogyny, love, sex and heartbreak. But this isn't just a book about Black women's trauma, it is also a book that embraces and celebrates the things that make Black women different. For readers of SLAY IN YOUR LANE, Candice Brathwaite and Issa Rae.Bitter crop: The heartache and triumph of billie holiday's last year
By Paul Alexander. 2024
A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon In the first biography of…
Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America&’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday&’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop —a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit , her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular musicVision: My Story Of Strength (I, Witness #0)
By Precious Perez. 2023
A young activist opens a window into her journey to become a professional musician and leader for the disabled community.…
Ever since Precious Perez was a child, she has loved to sing. Born and raised outside Boston, her family joked that she’d eventually study at Berklee College of Music. But when a high school music teacher advocated for Precious’s talent, her dream became a reality. Precious was born two-and-a-half months premature and weighed just one pound. Her eyes did not develop fully, and she is blind. Growing up, most people focused on what Precious could not do because of her disability. With her teacher’s support, Precious realized all the things she could do with her disability—starting with attending Berklee. With a voice that is both accessible and engaging, Vision brings forward an empowering first-person account of a woman finding strength and purpose in her disability. The I, Witness series delivers compelling narrative nonfiction by young people, for young people.American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light
By Iain Sinclair. 2013
The visionary writer Iain Sinclair turns his sights to the Beat Generation in America in his most epic journey yet"How…
best to describe Iain Sinclair?" asks Robert Macfarlane in The Guardian. "A literary mud-larker and tip-picker? A Travelodge tramp (his phrase)? A middle-class dropout with a gift for bullshit (also his phrase)? A toxicologist of the twenty-first-century landscape? A historian of countercultures and occulted pasts? An intemperate WALL-E, compulsively collecting and compacting the city's textual waste? A psycho-geographer (from which term Sinclair has been rowing away ever since he helped launch it into the mainstream)? He's all of these, and more." Now, for the first time, the enigma that is Iain Sinclair lands on American shores for his long-awaited engagement with the memory-filled landscapes of the American Beats and their fellow travelers. A book filled with bad journeys and fated decisions, American Smoke is an epic walk in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and others, heated by obsession (the Old West, volcanoes, Mexico) and enlivened by false memories, broken reports, and strange adventures. With American Smoke, Sinclair confirms his place as the most innovative of our chroniclers of the contemporary.Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini
By Christopher Sandford. 1997
Renowned mystery author Arthur Conan Doyle and famous illusionist Harry Houdini first met in 1920, during the magician's tour of…
England. At the time, Conan Doyle had given up his lucrative writing career, killing off Sherlock Holmes in the process, in order to concentrate on his increasingly manic interest in Spiritualism. Houdini, who regularly conducted séances in an attempt to reach his late mother, was also infatuated with the idea of what he called a "living afterlife," though his enthusiasm came to be tempered by his ability to expose fraudulent mediums, many of whom employed crude variations of his own well-known illusions. Using previously unpublished material on the murky relationship between Houdini and Conan Doyle, this sometimes macabre, sometimes comic tale tells the fascinating story of the relationship between two of the most loved figures of the 20th century and their pursuit of magic and lost loved ones.Some Enchanted Evenings: The Glittering Life and Times of Mary Martin
By David Kaufman. 2016
Mary Martin was one of the greatest stars of her day. Growing up in Texas, she was married early to…
Benjamin Hagman and gave birth to her first child, Larry Hagman. She was divorced even more quickly. Martin left little Larry with her parents and took off for Hollywood. She didn't make a dent in the movie industry and was lured to New York where she found herself auditioning for Cole Porter and his new show "Leave It to Me!". After she sang the bawdy "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", she ended up on the cover of Life magazine. Six years later, she became the Toast of Broadway when she starred in "South Pacific". After that, she flew as "Peter Pan", yodeled in "The Sound of Music", took "Hello, Dolly!" on the road and shared a four-poster with Robert Preston in "I Do! I Do!". Her personal life was just as interesting: In NYC, she met and married Richard Halliday, a closeted upper-class homosexual who adored her, Broadway and interior decorating (though probably not in that order). They were a powerful twosome. There were rumors about Martin, too, being in a lesbian relationship with both Janet Gaynor and Jean Arthur. Peopled with legends like Ethel Merman, Ezio Pinza, Noel Coward and a starry cast of thousands, David Kaufman's "Some Enchanted Evenings" is the delectable story of the one and only Mary Martin, a woman who described herself as a chicken farmer from Texas only to become Peter Pan and capture America's heart.But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct: Lessons from a Life Behind the Camera
By Ken Kwapis. 2020
For over three decades, director Ken Kwapis has charted a career full of exceptional movies and television, from seminal shows…
like The Office to beloved films like He’s Just Not That Into You.He is among the most respected directors in show business, but getting there wasn’t easy. He struggled just like everyone else. With each triumph came the occasional faceplant. Using his background and inside knowledge, But What I Really Want To Do is Direct tackles Hollywood myths through Ken’s highly entertaining experiences. It’s a rollercoaster ride fueled by brawls with the top brass, clashes over budgets, and the passion that makes it all worthwhile.This humorous and refreshingly personal memoir is filled with inspiring instruction, behind-the-scenes hilarity, and unabashed joy. It’s a celebration of the director’s craft, and what it takes to succeed in show business on your own terms. "Ken Kwapis always brought out the best in the actors on The Office. Whenever Ken was directing, I always felt safe to go out on a limb and take chances, knowing he had my back. Every aspiring director should read this book. (I can think of several 'professional' directors that should read it too!)" -Jenna Fischer"A vital, magnificent manifesto on the art and craft of directing, written with emotional, instinctual and intellectual depth by one of America's most beloved film and television directors" -Amber Tamblyn"In the years that I was fortunate to work with Ken on Malcolm in the Middle, he had an uncanny ability to guide actors right to the heart of a scene and reveal its truths. He admits that he doesn’t have all the answers, he’ll make mistakes, and at times he’ll struggle, but as he says in the book, 'It’s the struggle to get it right that makes us human.'" -Bryan Cranston"Good luck finding a more kind, passionate, and talented director alive than Ken. Seriously, good luck." -Tig Notaro“'Action!' is what most directors bark out to begin a scene. But Ken Kwapis starts by gently intoning the words 'Go ahead…' That simple suggestion assures everyone they’re in smart, capable, humble hands. That’s how you’ll feel reading this book. And so, if you’re anxious to discover how a top director always brings humor, honesty, and humanity to his work, all I can tell you is…Go ahead." -Larry WilmoreEye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art
By Judith E. Stein. 2016
In 1959, Richard Bellamy was a witty, poetry-loving beatnik on the fringe of the New York art world who was…
drawn to artists impatient for change. By 1965, he was representing Mark di Suvero, was the first to show Andy Warhol’s pop art, and pioneered the practice of “off-site” exhibitions and introduced the new genre of installation art. As a dealer, he helped discover and champion many of the innovative successors to the abstract expressionists, including Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Walter De Maria, and many others. The founder and director of the fabled Green Gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street, Bellamy thrived on the energy of the sixties. With the covert support of America’s first celebrity art collectors, Robert and Ethel Scull, Bellamy gained his footing just as pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art were taking hold and the art world was becoming a playground for millionaires. Yet as an eccentric impresario dogged by alcohol and uninterested in profits or posterity, Bellamy rarely did more than show the work he loved. As fellow dealers such as Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis capitalized on the stars he helped find, Bellamy slowly slid into obscurity, becoming the quiet man in oversize glasses in the corner of the room, a knowing and mischievous smile on his face.Born to an American father and a Chinese mother in a Cincinnati suburb, Bellamy moved to New York in his twenties and made a life for himself between the Beat orbits of Provincetown and white-glove events like the Guggenheim’s opening gala. No matter the scene, he was always considered “one of us,” partying with Norman Mailer, befriending Diane Arbus and Yoko Ono, and hosting or performing in historic Happenings. From his early days at the Hansa Gallery to his time at the Green to his later life as a private dealer, Bellamy had his finger on the pulse of the culture. Based on decades of research and on hundreds of interviews with Bellamy’s artists, friends, colleagues, and lovers, Judith E. Stein’s Eye of the Sixties rescues the legacy of the elusive art dealer and tells the story of a counterculture that became the mainstream. A tale of money, taste, loyalty, and luck, Richard Bellamy’s life is a remarkable window into the art of the twentieth century and the making of a generation’s aesthetic.--"Bellamy had an understanding of art and a very fine sense of discovery. There was nobody like him, I think. I certainly consider myself his pupil." --Leo CastelliSo As I Was Saying . . .: My Somewhat Eventful Life
By Frank Mankiewicz, Joel Swerdlow. 2016
“I first met Robert Kennedy because I spoke Spanish. I spoke Spanish because the U.S. Army taught me that before…
sending me to France, Belgium, and Germany to fight Hitler’s Army. This makes complete sense if you are familiar with military bureaucracy.”Such is the trademark wit of Frank Mankiewicz. With his dry sense of humor and self-deprecating humility—despite his many accomplishments—Frank’s voice speaks from the pages of So as I was Saying... in a way that is both conversational and profound. Before he died in 2014 Frank’s fascinating life took him from Beverly Hills to the battlefields of Europe; from the halls of power in Washington D.C. to the far corners of the world. A lifelong student of humanity and mentor to many, including presidents, Frank was a loving father, husband, and friend, and his legacy is will endure for generations.Born into Hollywood royalty but determined to make his own way, Frank served in World War Two, wrote speeches for Robert Kennedy, ran a presidential campaign, carried messages to Fidel Castro, served as president of National Public Radio (helping create Morning Edition), and as regional director for the Peace Corps. Naturally such a long and interesting life gave rise to a myriad of opinions, and Frank was not afraid to share them. In this intriguing, insightful, and often humorous memoir, Frank recalls his favorite memories while sharing his opinions on everything from Zionism to smartphones. Imbued with the personality of one of the twentieth century’s most gifted raconteurs, So As I Was Saying... invokes nostalgia for the past even as it gives hope for the future.Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things
By Margaret Moser, Michael Bertin, Bill Crawford. 1999
Johnny Depp. Marilyn Monroe. Marlon Brando. Leonardo DiCaprio. Woody Allen. Shanron Stone. What do all of these actors have in…
common? They're outrageous, receive huge salaries, have enormous egos, and have way too much spare time. Their out-of-control lifestyles prove that, as one Hollywood observer noted, "Hollywood is a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat." You'll learn which director was furious when he was misquoted as saying, "Actors are cattle." He claimed he had really said, "Actors should be treated as cattle." You'll discover that Bruce Wilis ordered the final scenes in Striking Distance to be re-shot at a cost of over $750,000 because the original shots exposed his toupee.You'll find that Melanie Griffith explained her ignorance of the Nazi holocaust by saying, "I don't know why I didn't know. Maybe I missed school that day...I'm not stupid." Whether you're a fan of Hugh Grant, Dennis Hopper, or Whoopi Goldberg, you'll learn about all of the embarrassing moments in your favorite star's life. From actors like Ben Affleck and Cameron Diaz to screen legends like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things is proof that actors are more childish and impulsive than you've ever imagined.To millions of fans, All About Eve represents all that's witty and wonderful in classic Hollywood movies. Its old-fashioned, larger-than-life…
stars--including Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, and Celeste Holm--found their best roles in Eve and its sophisticated dialogue has entered the lexicon.But there's much more to know about All About Eve. Sam Staggs has written the definitive account of the making of this fascinating movie and its enormous influence on both film and popular culture. Staggs reveals everything about the movie--from who the famous European actress Margo Channing was based on to the hot-blooded romance on-set between Bette Davis and costar Gary Merrill, from the jump-start the movie gave Marilyn Monroe's career and the capstone it put on director Joseph L. Mankeiwicz's.All About "All About Eve" is not only full of rich detail about the movie, the director, and the stars, but also about the audience who loved it when it came out and adore it to this day.When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of A Streetcar Named Desire
By Sam Staggs. 2005
Exhaustively researched and almost flirtatiously opinionated, When Blanche Met Brando is everything a fan needs to know about the ground-breaking…
New York and London stage productions of Williams' "Streetcar" as well as the classic Brando/Leigh film. Sam Staggs' interviews with all the living cast members of each production will enhance what's known about the play and movie, and help make this book satisfying as both a pop culture read and as a deeper piece of thinking about a well-known story. Readers will come away from this book delighted with the juicy behind-the-scenes stories about cast, director, playwright and the various productions and will also renew their curiosity about the connection between the role of Blanche and Viven Leigh's insatiable sexual appetite and later descent into breakdown. They may also-for the first time-question whether the character of Blanche was actually "mad" or whether her anxiousness was symptomatic of another disorder."A Streetcar Named Desire" is one of the most haunting and most-studied modern plays. Staggs' new book will fascinate fans and richen newcomers' understanding of its importance in American theater and movie history.Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer
By Philip Furia. 2003
Skylark is the story of the tormented but glorious life and career of Johnny Mercer, and the first biography of…
this enormously popular and influential lyricist. Raised in Savannah, Mercer brought a quintessentially southern style to both his life in New York and to his lyrics, which often evoked the landscapes and mood of his youth ("Moon River", "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening"). Mercer also absorbed the music of southern blacks--the lullabies his nurse sang to him as a baby and the spirituals that poured out of Savannah's churches-and that cool smooth lyrical style informed some of his greatest songs, such as "That Old Black Magic".Part of a golden guild whose members included Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, Mercer took Hollywood by storm in the midst of the Great Depression. Putting words to some of the most famous tunes of the time, he wrote one hit after another, from "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" to "Jeepers Creepers" and "Hooray for Hollywood." But it was also in Hollywood that Mercer's dark underside emerged. Sober, he was a kind, generous and at times even noble southern gentleman; when he drank, Mercer tore into friends and strangers alike with vicious abuse. Mercer's wife Ginger, whom he'd bested Bing Crosby to win, suffered the cruelest attacks; Mercer would even improvise cutting lyrics about her at parties.During World War II, Mercer served as Americas's troubadour, turning out such uplifting songs as "My Shining Hour" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive." He also helped create Capitol Records, the first major West Coast recording company, where he discovered many talented singers, including Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole. During this period, he also began an intense affair with Judy Garland, which rekindled time and again for the rest of their lives. Although they never found happiness together, Garland became Mercer's muse and inspired some of his most sensuous and heartbreaking lyrics: "Blues in the Night," "One for My Baby," and "Come Rain or Come Shine."Mercer amassed a catalog of over a thousand songs and during some years had a song in the Top Ten every week of the year--the songwriting equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak--but was plagued by a sense of failure and bitterness over the big Broadway hit that seemed forever out of reach.Based on scores of interviews with friends, family and colleagues, and drawing extensively on Johnny Mercer's letters, papers and his unpublished autobiography, Skylark is an important book about one of the great and dramatic characters in 20th century popular music.How About Never—Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons
By Bob Mankoff. 2014
Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New YorkerPeople tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor…
of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."Ian McKellen: A Biography
By Garry O'Connor. 2019
The definitive biography of Sir Ian McKellen from an acclaimed biographer In 2001, Ian McKellen put on the robe and…
pointed hat of a wizard named Gandalf and won a place in the hearts of Tolkien fans worldwide. Though his role in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings introduced him to a new audience, McKellen had a thriving career a lifetime before his visit to Middle Earth. He made his West End acting debut in 1964 in James Saunders’s A Scent of Flowers, but it was in 1980 that he took Broadway by storm when he played Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Tony-Award-winning play Amadeus.He has starred in over four hundred plays and films and he is that rare character: a celebrity whose distinguished political and social service has transcended his international fame to reach beyond the stage and screen. The breadth of his career—professional, personal and political—has been truly staggering: Macbeth (opposite Judi Dench), Iago, King Lear, Chekhov’s Sorin in The Seagull and Becket’s tramp Estragon (opposite Patrick Stewart) in Waiting for Godot. Add to all this his tireless political activism in the cause of gay equality and you have a veritable phenomenon. Garry O’Connor’s Ian McKellen: A Biography probes the heart of the actor, recreating his greatest stage roles and exploring his personal life. Ian McKellen will show readers what makes a great actor tick. His life story has been a constantly developing drama and this biography is the next chapter.